Jerk All Your Clothes Off

Lyle Tuttle

Bert did a lot of big tattoos on people, and he liked doing big tattoos. And he had decorated quite a few people that were — but the work is like tattooed men in sideshows, and women also. And I don’t know, he just had a — he was a super charismatic guy that — I always say that when you got around Bert Grimm, and was working with him, you wanted to jerk all your clothes off and get tattooed all over.1

But he — if you get into a profession, and tattooing is decorating the body, I mean here you’re decorating the body all day. And yeah, I guess you basically like that. I had gotten hold of a picture of two eagles fighting in a sunburst from an old tattoo artist by the name of Brooklyn Joe Lieber up in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I carried that around for a few years, and when Bert seen it, he’s “Oh, I’d love to put that on.” Bert was this super salesman in a way. And he was — but he had this excitement about him. So, I said, well, you could put it on my back. I didn’t have anything on my back. I had an eagle on my chest, and my arms were very well covered, and I had some tattoos on my legs, but still a lot of white hide showing.